Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Sabbath and Tabernacle

We also observe the Jewish Sabbath. There are 39 categories of activity that are forbidden on the Sabbath. It’s often mistranslated as ‘work’. But that gets things entirely wrong. Flipping on a light switch is forbidden on the Sabbath, but running up and down the stairs a hundred times, is completely permitted, even though the latter is much harder work than the former! The technical term in Jewish law is melechet machshevet and it means something like ‘purposive activity’, and, I think it’s best understood as ‘distinctively human manipulation of the environment’. We refrain from that on the Sabbath, in order to demonstrate, in the language of ritual, that our ability to manipulate the environment is a gift to us from God, on loan to us, so to speak; and to demonstrate our belief that the environment really belongs to God, its creator; and to remember the exodus from Egypt, by refusing to subjugate the world around us, or to be subjugated ourselves into labour (of a certain kind).

The 39 categories of work are derived from the Biblical building of the Tabernacle. It’s building is juxtaposed, in the Bible, with the laws of the Sabbath. Just as God built a world for us to dwell in, we built a Tabernacle for Him to dwell in. Just as God rested from the work that created the world, on the Sabbath; we rest from the work that created the Tabernacle, on the Sabbath.

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For a rough introduction to my philosophy of blogging, including the Code of Amiability I try to follow on this weblog, please read my fifth anniversary post. I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions.